Sunday, December 28, 2014

Today I decided that I would dump all
my old belongings, of course it was my wife who took the decision. The decision
did not include dumping each other and so you see we are still together. Well
you may ask – why such a drastic decision? The truth is that we were hemmed in
on all sides and it was becoming difficult to breathe. You may again ask why
now and so suddenly? I have an answer to that also – the New Year was around
the corner and that is when everyone resolves to make new resolutions. So what
happens to all the resolutions you made the end of the previous year for this
present year? Well dump them for you have no options left now as the time has
run out.

We live in a small flat but sometimes
the thought crosses my mind that we should have gone for a bigger one instead
at the time when the prices were low. What’s the point cribbing about it now! Then,
I had just enough money after taking a loan from the bank and some personal
savings to buy the place where we now stay. When I had some more money the
prices had also gone up making it impossible for me to think otherwise. But
whenever someone asks me this question, I just say that the value of my house
has appreciated more than thirty times in the last two and a half decades and
proceed to point out that it was the only wise investment that I had made in my
life (apart from my wife of course). What was once a deserted suburb has now
become a hub of commercial activity and though I like calmer climes I have no
choice, for even if I decide to sell this flat and more over to farther suburbs
where it is possible to get the ‘quiet’ and a bigger place to stay (that
sometimes crosses my mind), it wouldn’t be worth it for we are growing old and
need to stay where we are closer to what we are used to. So you see I cannot
dump my house. It stays along with my wife.

So you will ask me once again – why all
this prattle, what did you ultimately decide to dump? That’s fair I guess
because I started it all. Today my wife came to me when I was busy looking at
my music collection – she said “Do you know there is a website called
kuppathoti.com (literally translated in English as garbagebin.com)? They are
ready to take whatever junk you have and you get paid for it. Why don’t you
just check it up?”

As always when I am shaken out of my
reverie it would take a few minutes for me to become conscious of my
surroundings. The full import of what my wife had just said slowly descended
into my consciousness. Strewn before me were the two hundred and odd music
cassettes, a collection dating back three decades. My wife’s voice once again
boomed – “So when was the last time you listened to any of them? I am sure that
if you try to play them on that cassette player we have, you will hear only scraping
sounds. Don’t you feel that we don’t need them anymore and can dump them along
with the cassette player? After all you have told me that now you can download
any music you want and store them on a pen drive or on the Ipod. It would save
me a lot of bother dusting and storing the cassettes when I know they are not
going to be used anymore.”

My wife is a sensible person and
practical to the core. She of course never mentioned my huge stack of books or
my LPs for she knew that was a touchy subject. Another consideration could have
been that they were not as perishable as music cassettes and could always be
considered as collector’s item.

I went back in time to a period when as
a young man much into music and a newly found economic freedom (the aftermath
of the first job) went about acquiring the things that I always wanted to have
– a motor cycle, a stereo system, music LPs and ultimately a wife; for all
practical purposes it was in that order. The others have been dumped while the
last one endures.

I remember when back in school, I made
my mother sit one day and tighten all my pants as with the advent of the
Beatles and the aftermath of Elvis and Cliff Richards the drainpipes were the
in thing. Of course we had our own desi James Bond, Jeetendra prancing and
romancing his lady interest round and round every goddam tree in the vicinity
in his skin tight pants in the movie Farz – the villains could never take the
pants off him. I grew my hair long and believe me when I say it, for that is
one thing that I have shed over the years and reached a stage where no change
in hairstyle fashion would affect me. I remember my schoolmates especially my
Anglo Indian friends who would spend considerable time styling their hair the
Cliff Richard way – comb all the hair (properly oiled so that they stay in
place) back over the head and then with a flick of the comb pull the front
portion and make it dangle over their forehead; after all Cliff was an Anglo
born in India. My head is now absolute and can never become obsolete. But came
another period when the drainpipes gave way to bell bottoms. That was more
difficult for you could never convert your drainpipes to bell bottoms, you had
to stitch new pants and that cost. Well you had no choice but to fall in with
the crowd. In the wedding reception photograph I can be seen fully suited with
bell bottomed pants. The more it waved in the wind the more you were with the
Joneses. After all it was Amitabh Bachhan who really set the trend with his
long legs, the bell bottoms really swayed along with the audience every time he
delivered a dialogue or kicked the villain. But I have a sneaky feeling that
the bell bottoms were invented to cover long and skinny legs. Imagine a short
guy wearing them, there will be no bottom only a bell. The coat, I never wore
after that. Years later whenever there was a chill in the air my wife would dig
it out for me to wear. I did wear it but never ventured out. This went on till
I developed broader shoulders and some muscular structure (believe me once
again when I say this). The only way I could insert my hands inside the sleeves
was the back in front position. The wedding suit was preserved till the time
our marriage was confirmed strong enough to dump it. Oops! The suit I mean. The
moral of the story is that we dump our clothes ever so often to keep in tune
with the changes in our perception of how we should present ourselves to the
discerning eyes of the beholder. Again I have to clarify that this does not
include all the times we dump our clothes when we go to the loo or to have a
bath or to bed (Oops! There I go again. Pardon me). Well to cut the story about
my clothes short, my wife said to me “your cupboard is stacked with clothes you
don’t wear at all. You need only jeans T-shirts and Kurtas nowadays and of
course shorts when you are at home. Why do you still keep all those branded
full sleeve shirts and ties, the remnants of your working days? You are never
going to be called for an interview or given a job any more. In fact you do not
need anything more than shorts since you are mostly at home sitting in front of
your latest paramour (She has a point when she says - why should we call a
laptop a laptop when now there is so much written about the hazards of keeping
it on your lap”. Of course I never replied, keeping what I wanted to say to
myself – anything on a lap is hazardous – Oops! ---). Well ultimately I decided
to abide by what has been said by Gita (hey I meant the Bhagavad Gita) – shed
all attachments and proceed on towards realizing the self. I took the first
step today, I cleaned out my cupboard – two thirds of it, and my wife was
happy. She did not give up “Well tomorrow ring up Udhavum Karangal – Helping
Hands and ask them to pick it up. We can at least finish the year with a good
deed and start the next on a clean slate”. Tomorrow I shall say ‘The deed is
done’.

I joined the club of smart people a few
days ago. Don’t get the idea that I was a dumb ass all along and somehow enlightenment
dawned on me and I became smart. I was along happy leading the unsmart life
till now. It was simple and there were no additional demands on my slowly
deteriorating mental faculties. Well, all that changed when my daughter bought
me a new mobile phone after severely reprimanding me for clinging on to my
antique mobile which had been with me for nearly six years, served me well,
survived many a fall and fitted into my pockets smugly without any evident
protuberances. “It’s time you got out of being an antique yourself. This is
called a smart phone and it will help you keep upto date with what is happening
around even when you are on the move”.

“You mean to say that I shall become
smart if I have this? I think I have been smart enough till now and that will
do”.

Well, what can one say about daughters!
They always have their way in the end. So now I have a smart phone and I have
been receiving complaints from my friends asking me as to why I keep cutting
off their calls – you see I realized later that I have been swiping the wrong
way. Well in the end I have now dumped my old mobile. But I did not throw it
away. It has gone into that pile of other things I have been accumulating over
the years – older mobiles, old cameras, watches, spectacles and pens. Well they
stay for now. The day for dumping them may not be far off.

So now can you guess why I titled this ‘Memories
were made of these’ and not ‘are’ made of these? These things
have been dumped and so have your memories along with them. And then one day it
shall happen – You get dumped.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

It was sometime in Aug 1975 nearly four decades ago when I visited the
Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad and for the first time gazed at the statue of
Rebecca I was awestruck by the sheer beauty of the marble sculpture and penned
down a few lines of verse. That’s all I could do for I did not have a camera. When
I look back and read what I had written I realize that it was an outcome of the
impulsive romantic that I was at that time. I still enjoy reading it and relive
that phase of my life. Now in December 2014 nearly four decades later when I went
there again, I spent time standing there staring at the statue, but now I did
not need words for I had a camera and so I captured what I saw. I was no longer
the romantic who bid adieu with a heavy heart but someone who had realized that
‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’

Friday, December 12, 2014

In the introduction to his translation of ‘The Best
Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky’ David Magarshack observes that it is in
Dostoevsky’s smaller works that we find the highest expression of his creative
power and profundity of thought. The selection of stories in this book include
–

White Nights

The Honest Thief

The Christmas Tree and a Wedding

The Peasant Marey

Notes from the Underground

A Gentle Creature

The Dream of A Ridiculous Man.

My reading of Dostoevsky so far had been limited to
his three major novels –

Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The
Idiot and the shorter novellas The Possessed and Notes from the Underground
(included above in the short stories)

These stories are so distinct and still so
interconnected that the full force of Dostoevsky’s thought processes so
elaborated in his more famous longer novels are brought out here with such
impact that I thought that to do justice to this collection of the best short
stories it would be necessary to review each story individually and as such I thought
I should do it over a series of posts on this blog.

WHITE
NIGHTS – A sentimental love story – From the memoirs of a dreamer

And was it
his destined part

Only one
moment in his life

To be close
to your heart ….. – Ivan Turgenev

White Nights is a story spread over four nights
about a lonely man (the narrator) and his unrequited love for a young woman
whom he befriends one night while she is waiting for the return of her lover to
be reunited with him. This is a simple story and in fact was adapted as the
underlying theme for the Hindi Film ‘Saawariya’ by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
Dostoevsky’s story however delves deep into the psyche of the lonely man – a
man who had shut himself off from human relationships and seemed to be more at
ease with the inanimate objects around him; a man who had withdrawn himself
into a shelf of self-pity and deprecation. Like most of Dostoevsky’s novels the
story is told in first person by a nameless narrator –

“When I woke up in the morning I felt strangely
depressed, a feeling I could not shake for the better part of the day. All of a
sudden it seemed to me as though I, the solitary one, had been forsaken by the
whole world, and the whole world would have nothing to do with me.”

He feels more comfortable walking the streets of
St. Petersburg at night for during the day though he was never in the habit of
interacting with anyone he used to connect emotionally with the faces he
encountered and felt uneasy when they were absent or he came across new faces.
At night he felt alone and happy and was surrounded always by the things he
knew, the houses as he walked down the streets. They seemed to talk to him. He
says –

“The houses too are familiar to me. When I walk
along the street, each of them seems to run before me, gazing at me out of all
its windows and practically saying to me, “Good morning, sir! How are you? I’m
very well, thank you. They are going to add another storey to me in May”; or,
how do you do, sir? I’m going to be repaired tomorrow”. And so on. He says some
of them are great favourites of his and good friends.

White Nights is to a large extent considered
autobiographical of a young Dostoevsky’s personal impressions during his own nocturnal
wanderings in Petersburg.

As they exchange their stories the protagonist finds
himself falling in love with the young woman Nastenka. A lonely man at last
finds there is someone actually real who has evoked this feeling of being
wanted, for all the while he has been inside his self-imposed cocoon of
solitude. His feelings are very clear when he says – “I know you’ll hardly
believe me, but I’ve never spoken to any woman, never! Never known one either! I
only dream that someday I shall meet someone at last. Oh, if only you knew how
many times I’ve fallen in love like that!”

While Nastenka does develop feelings for him she
never does acknowledge that she loves him and at the end on the fourth night
when the young man whom she had been in love, and for whom she was waiting,
does appear she goes away with him after giving our protagonist a letter where
she states she will always love him as a dear friend.

The narrator ends by saying “Good Lord, only a
moment of bliss? Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man’s life?”

But perhaps the most telling passage in the story
and which brings forth the angst of existence and by which I can surmise that
therein lies the foundation of the whole of Dostoevsky’s philosophy and a
forerunner of Existentialism is when he tells Nastenska –

“And you ask yourself - where are your dreams? And you
shake your head and murmur; how quickly time flies! And you ask yourself again –
what have you done with your time, where have you buried the best years of your
life? Have you lived your life or not? Look, you say to yourself, look how
everything in the world is growing cold. Some more year will pass, and they
will be followed by cheerless solitude, and then will come tottering old age,
with its crutch, and after it despair desperation. Your fantastic world will
fade away, your dreams will wilt and die, scattering like yellow leaves from
the trees. Oh, Nastenka, what can be more heartbreaking than to be left alone,
all alone, and have nothing, absolutely nothing, because all you’ve lost was nothing,
nothing but a silly round zero, nothing but an empty dream!”

Saturday, November 29, 2014

I paused before I rang again and waited patiently outside the apartment.
It took a good two minutes before the door slowly opened; obviously the person
behind was being cautious not wanting to be surprised by an unwelcome guest. Of
course the danger of any intruder barging in was out of the question as she
stood safe behind a grilled door, an additional reinforcement to keep away
pests of a different kind. The look she gave me made me feel that I did belong
to the second variety. The opened door did allow the aroma of ‘Sambhar rice’
reach my nostrils and for a moment I forgot the purpose for which I had come;
the blistering sun outside, my aching limbs and the rumblings in my stomach had
already made me groggy.

The lady of the house, she had to be that for she stared at me with such
authority and with a trace of contempt while wiping her hands on a towel slung
over her shoulder.

“Yes, who are you and what do you want?” She asked.

“Madam, if you can spare me two minutes of your time I will be grateful”
I replied.

“Well man you have already interrupted me in the middle of my cooking.
Are you a salesman? If it is Maggie noodles since you want just two minutes of
my time, I am not interested. No one in this house likes them anyway.”

“Madam, I am sorry you misunderstood me. I am not a salesman and I do
not sell noodles. I am here to talk about a book” I said trying to sound
important,

“Oh books! Please I am not interested in any of your encyclopaedias or
children books. You see our children have grown up and moved away and only I
and my husband live here. We have no need for books”.

“I think this book would interest you and your husband, just have a look
at it” I persisted thrusting a copy of my book through the grilled door.

She looked at the cover without reaching for the book and for a moment
looked surprised. “That’s you on the cover. You wrote the book?”

“Yes Madam, I am the author. The book talks about the life of an
ordinary man, his dreams, beliefs, aspirations and the transformations that
take place in his life during the process of aging. I think your husband will
definitely like the book.”

“So you are here to sell me your book, isn’t that your main intention?”
she asked.

“In a way yes” I said sheepishly.

“So you are a Salesman after all, you sell books” she said with a smile.

“Yes Madam, by that definition I am a Bookseller. Why don’t you ask your
husband to browse through it? I shall leave a copy with you and come back
tomorrow. You can buy if you like the book.”

She took the book in her hand and flipped through the pages and in the end
said “I am just an ordinary man? What a funny name for a book. I don’t think
that we need this book. Ordinary eh! My husband is already that – Ordinary.”

With that she handed back the book to me through the grilled door.

When I got my book published I never thought that I would at last have
to resort to climbing stairs, knocking on doors to be met with cold stares,
scour the streets in search of gullible victims, learn to take ‘no’ for an answer
and ultimately come back with my inventory more or less intact. May be I misunderstood
my friend when he said that I needed to raise the sales pitch, I started
climbing stairs.

Ever since I started blogging I found that I have turned into some sort
of Nostradamus while trying to understand the travails of aspiring authors. In the
process all that I had written about the number of likes far exceeding the
number of books has come to pass. The initial euphoria accompanying the
announcement of the launch of my debut novel has at last waned and all the
congratulations and best wishes have now been confined to the recesses my
Facebook store.

But it has been an awakening of sorts. The author cannot expect that
everyone he knows be it a friend or a relation would ultimately purchase the
book, though every one of them in their heart of hearts is genuinely happy for
you. The author is in a hurry and the reader is not for he has his own affairs
to attend to. I do not exclude myself for though an author, I am also a reader.

But one thing is sure that the writer who is in the process of testing
the waters is an Author, Publisher and above all a Bookseller and believe me
that the last role is proving to be most difficult.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Spirituality is
serious stuff and that is what this whole book is about. In the author’s own
words he says “I have presented my understanding of spirituality from an
ordinary seeker’s perspective. It is not a scholarly treatise. It simply
presents the “musings” of a spiritual seeker based on the classical Indian
spiritual thinking as epitomised in Shrimad Bhagawad Geeta.” Yes, it is the
author’s own understanding and interpretation of The Bhagavad Gita and other
scriptures that is spread over twenty chapters, seeking to convey to the reader
the essence of Hindu Philosophy through a process of dialogue and
introspection. In the prologue itself the author sets the pattern when he says
“my idea is not to convince any reader by means of this book to take up
spirituality. It is simply a sharing that may have a role to play in some
people’s lives, if the divine scheme has it that way.”

Some time back I read
Richard Dawkins book ‘The God delusion’ where the entire book is based on the
author’s contention that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist
and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as
a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. Kulkarni
asserts that “I strongly believe that there is a divine plan behind this creation,
and certainly behind someone getting on to the spiritual path.”

Born into a
conservative Brahmin family, it was but natural that Kulkarni imbibed the
theistic values of his surroundings grew up as God fearing individual up to his
early youth. There were two transformation moments in his life – one in the
author’s own words “I may concede that by virtue of my education and
profession, I must have changed significantly from a god fearing child and
teenager to a “rational intellectual adult”, such as they come in the modern
times! So, I never thought I would ever become a serious spiritual seeker” and
the second was when he met his spiritual guru when on a trip to Singapore,
again in his own words “Those couple of hours somehow left a deep impression on
me. Not that she revealed any great fundamental truths or put forth any
“convincing” arguments in favour of spiritual pursuit. But something happened
to me all the same through that session. Since then, I engaged myself in a
little bit of meditation and gradually got more and more interested in
spiritual pursuit.” Though he says that he is an ordinary seeker, it is evident
that he has engaged himself in a serious study of the Hindu scriptures.

The interesting part
however is that the book will indeed appeal to the ordinary seeker as it is for
most part in the form of a conversation, a question and answer session between
the author and the reader with the author’s own narration and interpretations
thrown in to amplify the concept with examples from our own lives thrown in. The
twenty chapters cover the entire gamut of questions from the creation of the
world, the Creator to the question of ‘Who am I’, of desires and detachment,
freewill, destiny and action – the meaning of Vairaagya and the outcome of
actions or Karma Yoga, love, forgiveness, faith and non-violence. In the end there
is chapter on the significance of the scriptures.

The glossary of
Sanskrit terms at the end of the book is a must and the author has compiled it an
easy to refer tabular form. Without this the book would have proved
unintelligible to the ordinary reader and the others who would see it as an
introduction to Hindu spiritual thought.

This is a vast
subject and the author Kishore Kulkarni has acknowledged – “The book is
organised into two volumes. Language has very serious limitations and when it
comes to spiritual terms, two persons may understand them quite differently. That
is the reason I have presented up front in Volume 1, my understanding of the
various important spiritual terms and concepts, so that the reader can
appreciate my philosophy better. Volume 2 presents my ideas about the real
spiritual goal and the practice for achieving that goal – what exactly a spiritual
seeker should be doing – both in the inner mental realm as also in the external
world of action.”

I however felt that
the title could have been different for spirituality is a serious matter. All
in all a commendable effort for as the author says “After all, it is my strong
belief that spirituality is all about transformation of mind through constant
contemplation on the matters beyond the physical creation.”

Friday, November 14, 2014

At the very outset let me confess that I have always been a diehard
admirer of the works of Hermann Hesse. Whether it is Siddhartha, Steppenwolf,
Narziss and Goldmund down to his magnum opus ‘The Glass Bead Game’ they have left
their imprint and influence on me to this very day. Some time ago I did post
here ‘Duality 2 – A Tribute to Hermann Hesse’ to explore the recurring theme of
duality that characterises the works of Hermann Hesse, one of the greatest
German novelists of the twentieth century. Throughout all of his works one can
sense his attempts at bringing about a balance between the two opposing forces
of asceticism and the world, so that we reach a better understanding of the
world and on towards self-realization.

All that was three decades ago and I thought that I had exhausted all
the books written by him at least the significant ones (my ignorance). So it
was a revelation and a feeling of elation when I while browsing the books on
Goodreads chanced upon the ‘The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse’. Thirty years ago
I had last been transported to the magical world of Magister Ludi and ‘The
Glass Bead Game’ and ever since I have been searching for that world of Hesse.
It was a difficult book but once you plunged into that world there was no
turning back.

And so there I was during the last ten days letting in every word of
Hesse in this book – his fairy tales, sink into my psyche once again. I knew
what to expect – enter once again into his fabulous world of dreams and visions,
philosophy and passion. I will quote a portion of the blurb on the back cover
of the book which states –

“Full of visionaries and seekers, princesses and wandering poets, his
fairy tales speak to the place in our psyche that inspires us with deep spiritual
longing; that compels us to leave home and inevitably return; and that harbours
the greatest joys and most devastating wounds of our heart.”

Jack Zipes’s wonderful English translation does not ever make you feel
that you have missed out on any of Hesse’s original thought process in the
original German. In his exhaustive and wonderful Introduction Zipes has this
to say –

“To know Hermann Hesse’s fairy tales is to know the trauma, doubts, and
dreams of the artist as a young man in Germany at the beginning of a tumultuous
century. Like many other European writers, Hesse perceived the events around
him – the rapid advance of technology, the rise of materialism, the world wars,
the revolutions, and the economic inflations and depressions – as indicative of
the decline of Western Civilization. It was through art, especially the fairy
tale that Hesse sought to contend with what he perceived to be the sinister
threat of science and commercialism.”

Not to be misled by the term ‘Fairy Tale’ which to our understanding has
always been signified by ‘And they lived happily ever after’, Hesse’s fairy
tales are either tragic or open ended leaving it to us to contemplate and
change the conditions that had brought about such a closure. Hesse uses the fairy tale narrative
effectively of blending the world of imagination and symbolism with reality and
allowing the reader to go beyond and grasp the essence of living. In the
process he weaves a magical world and sometimes takes us back into the world of
Harry Haller in the Magic Theatre a place where he experiences the fantasies
that exist in his mind in the book ‘Steppenwolf’ or the world of Emil Sinclair
in ‘Demian’ whose entire existence can be summarized as a struggle between two
worlds: the show world of illusion (related to the Hindu concept of maya) and
the real world, the world of spiritual truth accompanied and prompted by his
mysterious classmate 'Max Demian', he detaches from and revolts against the
superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a
realization of self. In the story ‘If the War Continues’, the protagonist is
Emil Sinclair, a writer. One can recall that Hesse wrote ‘Demian’ under the
pseudonym of Emil Sinclair.

The book is more like a compendium of all the themes that Hesse covers
in his novels and reflections of his own life beliefs and convictions. There is
something mystical, magical about the way he weaves these short stories. One can
categorize the stories into distinct groups based on the dilemmas encountered
by the individual, society and the world at large.

While in the stories ‘The Dwarf’, ‘Shadow Play’, and “Dr.Knoegle’s End’
the sensitive and harmless protagonists are crushed by narrow minded people, in
‘The Poet’, ‘Flute Dream’, ‘Forest Dweller’ and ‘The Painter’ Hesse portrays their
realization through a search for attainment of their full potential. Hesse’s
pacifism and the search for an utopian order in this world comes out strongly
in- ‘A Dream about the Gods’, ‘Strange News from Another Planet’, ‘If the War
Continues’, ‘The European’ and ‘The Empire’.

The translator in his Introduction highlights Hesse’s that “Nationalism
is the most dangerous force because it can inspire people to obsessively seek
power and become caught up in war for war’s sake”.

Each and every one of the twenty two stories in this book have their own
appeal as Hesse takes us on a journey through his world of magical, sometimes
mystical world of romantic symbolism and idealism.

Jack Zipes the translator sums up his introduction – “Hesse’s best tales
are filled with a keen sense of longing for a home that is utopian counterpart
to the horrors we continue to witness in our present day and age”.

Now I feel happy that I have completed all of Hesse’s work, or have I? I
hope there are some more undiscovered ones,

Thursday, October 30, 2014

An author is happy when he finds
that he has been able to connect with the reader and that is his first reward. I
am overwhelmed by the first reviews that have come in, posted on Amazon,
Goodreads and Notion Press. I know that I have shared these with my friends as
and when each review came in but I feel the necessity to share these also with
the readers of my blog who lie even outside my social media circles. But I know
that I have a long way to go before I reach out to a larger audience. It is not
vanity I assure you, but is a quest to gain acceptability and hence an
authenticity to my writings. This should spur me on to improve myself for I am
also aware that this is the start of a journey. I should thank all the
reviewers for having taken the time to really go in to the soul of the book and
put down in their own words what they have seen and felt. Like I say in the ‘Introduction’
– “Life is never white or black, it has always been a combination” and so do I
expect the way people will look at my book.

The ’Ordinary Man’ is ordinary only to the extent that he is not a public
figure or famous. He is ordinary to the extent that all of us are ordinary and
lead mundane lives. Yet with his extraordinary thoughts he captivates us. He is
involved in a conversation with someone, whom he calls his alter ego, on the
events that shaped his life-his father’s demise when he (the protagonist) was
just 13, his days at a premier engineering institution, his dabbling with
painting, drama and music., his traditional marriage and the story of his love
for his loyal wife and lovely daughters, his mixed feelings about his
moderately successful career and then his thoughts on what could have been. The
author jumps from the past to the present and back to the past, replicating the
action of a human brain which works not chronologically but by association. The
story is interesting and well told. And you realise that this “Ordinary Man’ is
by no means ordinary. Shakespeare, Camus, Sartre and Gide among many others,
quantum physics and Schrodinger’s cat all influence the protagonist and one
sees the existential crisis or angst( as the author terms it) in his musings.

I must confess that I started the book expecting a cross
between a blog and a chronology of the author’s life with a dash of humour
thrown in. While I found all three I also found a profound exposition on human
nature, on morality, on passion and compassion packaged around lovable human
beings.

There were many passages which brought a lump to my throat
and there were others which brought smiles of happiness. It is rare that a book
can touch both the head and the heart. ‘I am Just an Ordinary Man’ does just
that.

Review for G S Subbu’s “I am an
Ordinary Man” –2014
By Kris Krishna
Which male individual born and growing up during the mid 20th century in the
rigid middle class in post independent India has not felt the angst of who they
really were and what they were destined to be?

G.S.Subbu in this semi autobiographical and fictional novelette has given voice
to those “yearning to breathe free”. He connects with a whole generation of
Indians that felt “left out” in the “freedom,” that India promised in 1947.

His approach to story telling adopts the protagonist versus alter ego style and
in the process he reinvents himself several times to describe the many what ifs
that could have moved him from being an “ordinary man” to someone more
“successful”.

The depth of his erudition is on full display as he quotes philosophers, poets
and artistes to buttress his argument that “waiting for miracles” does not
guarantee escape from being an “ordinary man”.

In the end his fictionalized last years..”death” as it approaches him is no
scarier than the comfort of knowing that his “grandchildren will recognize him”
and relationships and his legacy will endure.

A wonderfully conceived book and I recommend it if you want an introduction to
the age old question, “Who am I?”

“I am just an ordinary man” is an
honest and contemplative exposition of the author’s mind in a well articulated
style. Although the author’s life as brought out in this book is like that of
an ordinary middle class person from a conservative family background, the book
is not really a simple autobiographical account of the author. It is much more
than that. It presents an extra-ordinary philosophical view of an ordinary
man’s life. It starkly brings out the fundamental fact of life that one,
especially during the sunset years of one’s life, has to more likely tread a
lonely path. This is brought out very effectively, for example, in the fact of
the author and his wife leaving home together in the evening, but the author
turning right towards the beach for a walk and his wife turning left towards
the neighbourhood temple!

The author claims himself to be an ordinary man where the ordinariness is in
the sense that most of us seem to be programmed to go through our own life
willy nilly trying to fit our situation as best as possible. Most of us are
ordinary because most of the times, we keep seeing only a very limited and near
horizon, possibly because we do not know or are not designed to know the “big
purpose” behind not just our individual life but behind this creation as a
whole.

The author says he is an ordinary man and that is what he brings out through
most of the book by narrating his life story. However, the chapter titled
“Sublimation” reveals how an ordinary man’s journey of life can culminate in
the realisation of the fact that there is no universally applicable purpose of
life, nor a particularly ideal goal to be achieved. Life is just a journey
along a circular loop and that realisation is the real aim of the last of the
four phases of life, namely sanyasashram – a detachment from life even without
leaving home and family.

All in all, most of us being ordinary should be able to identify with the
protagonist of the book and should get spurred on to contemplate on their own
individual life philosophically.

Reading a book in one session, is
not something I am not used to in the recent days. But reading Subbu's book
"I am just AN ORDINARY MAN" in one shot has been some kind of record
for me.

Subbu depicts like Samuel Beckett, the life of an ordinary man, but the
capitals in the Title tell us something - that is no ordinary man. Life
achievements are counted in the modern times through the number of wounds one
carries, but unlike the ancient days to be a Bhishma, one does not need a bed
of arrows any more. Subbu captures it all - ordinary is no longer ordinary;
life's journey is a rock that stands still even as the river keeps on rushing
by.

The story surprises you, although it is so written that there cannot be any
surprise at all! I also love 'The Beatles' and they said it right -
"Because the world is round."

Please read this book, buy a few a copies, gift them, because - Because the
world is round.

The fictional autobiography “I am
just an ordinary man” by GS.Subbu is not an ordinary book by any standard. The
author does not follow the oft-repeated style of telling the story in a
chronological order. Instead he goes back and forth in time mainly focussing on
the experiences and their impact on his life. He has an easy felicity with the
language and is able to convey some of the deeply moving experiences of his
life with rare brevity of expression. One that stands out in my mind is the
scene where the he narrates the loss of his father when he is still a small boy
and how his mother holds him closely watching the funeral pyre of his father as
if to convey that she is there to take care of him. He analyses his own life in
an impartial manner through the medium of a friend who is nothing but his own
alter-ego. This is the life story of a person who through the fever and fret of
life never ceases the search for the deep inner silence.
The failures in life disappoint him only briefly as he bounces back to his
normal self by examining and analysing the events in their proper perspective.
The success or failure in the external world does not matter when it comes to
achieving the deep inner silence. In the chapter titled “Sublimation” the
author foresees himself in the final years of his life. He seems to understand
that the search for meaning of life is ultimately pointless as it is left to
oneself to give a meaning to it. His philosophical musings are highly readable
and his exposition of dreams he has has a Jungian quality.

The narrative of the story is very
gripping and is spruced up with some humorous touches here and there. In short
this is a book which comes under “must read” category.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Now
that the euphoria surrounding the publishing of my book ‘I AM JUST AN ORDINARY
MAN’ has subsided and I have been basking under the congratulatory messages and
the good wishes of my friends that had poured in, I realise that this is the
beginning of a journey to establish oneself as a writer of content whose
writings are genuine enough to linger in the mind of the reader long after it
has been read. The reality check has just started.

For
the first time in my life as a blogger I received nearly 350 page views of my
post announcing the publishing of my first book within the first two days of
posting (this is now well over 400). Over the last three years I have developed
a dedicated readership and it has given me immense satisfaction that I have to
a certain extent established myself as a writer of content. In the process I
have built up expectations that to a major percentage of them this book may
evoke interest and translate ultimately in to sales, not because I expect to
make money out of this venture, it is more to gain acceptability and establish
my authenticity.

You
can say the reality check started when I received a letter of intent from one
of the well-known publishers a portion of which I am reproducing here –

“We
receive about 1,500-2,000-odd scripts each month, and understandably, select
only a few books for complete review and further for publication. The
manuscripts ‘under consideration’, will get a publishing break, as and when the
company allocates funds. We have around 5,000 books in the pipeline at present,
and we release just about 200 each year. I am putting forth all details as
transparently as possible to avoid any further expectation-fulfillment
mismatch. Due to a continually widening
database of selected scripts and limited resources; a few worthy pieces of work
do suffer. To benefit authors and not overstretch the company’s resources, we
are offering you a project partnership proposal along with traditional
publishing.”

Subsequently
I did receive a mail after submission of the full manuscript stating “Thanks
for the mail, we have evaluated your work in full and are glad that we could
explore the possibilities of working together on your book.”

Naturally
I was elated, but it took me only a few months to realize that it could take
months or even years before my dream could come true (a possibility).

The
reality is stark for a new writer, as is evident from what I have reproduced
above. There are thousands of writers out there because writing has become easy
with the advent of the digitised world, but publishing has become a major
hurdle for the new writer and he ultimately finds that the only way to make his
dream come true is through self-publishing. And that is where the self-publishing
houses with their choice of packages and services come in to suit the pockets
of the author concerned. From my own experience I should accept that they did
do a decent job of printing a quality book and putting it on the various major
online stores. But that’s all. How many writers must be languishing out there
for want of resources to publish their work!

The
next reality check – how successful have I been in selling my book because that
is my lookout now. The new self-published author has no option but to rely on
the vast (?) circle of friends he has developed over the years on the social
media and otherwise to give the necessary initial push to make him more visible
to the vast readership out there. Even if 25% of your friends on the social
media respond it could be a satisfactory performance I would say. Well that is
the reality check again.

But
the entire process of writing, publishing and selling a book has been a great
experience and an eye opener. I have read a lot and learnt a lot and I have
finished my book and that has been my reward.

I
have been reaching out to my friends through Facebook, Google+ and just started
with Twitter(I am still learning how to interact on this). But I know that a
large number of the readers of my blog postings who only appear as page views
are also there from various places in the world and who I am sure have read my
previous post and this is my way of reaching out to them.

The
book ‘I AM JUST AN ORDINARY MAN’ is available both as paperback and Kindle
Ebook on amazon.com and amazon.in apart from the publisher Notion press for the
present. The Links are given here –